Be the first to know.

News archives refer to Memorial Day services in Fort Worth as early as 1885, when Union veterans read Lincoln speeches and fired a salute over a Union officer’s grave. Brevet Maj. Gen. James J. Byrne, an Irishman, went on to become a U.S. marshal before dying in an 1880 West Texas Apache attack.

"Veterans of the North, Too, Are Eager for Flowers And Autos On Memorial Day, Thursday"

“An appeal of the Confederates for automobiles and flowers on their memorial day was answered,” the editorial said, referring to Confederate Memorial Day in April.

“Now, the veterans of the North are asking the people of Fort Worth the same thing.”

Almost as an afterthought, the editorial added that soldiers, sailors and aviators lost in the World War “will alike receive recognition,” including the 12 British and Canadian pilots killed here in training.

(Their graves in a British-owned plot at Greenwood Cemetery are decorated to this day, but that Canadian military ceremony is held only in odd-numbered years.)

That July, Fort Worth lost a son in the war when former Texas Longhorns tackle and Army 1st Lt. Bothwell Kane died on the battlefield in France.

The next year, in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson asked Americans to redefine Memorial Day for “not only the union of our country, but also now the liberation of the world.”

Among the speakers was Texas National Guard commander and World War hero Gen. John A. Hulen, still remembered along with the name of the World War I Army training post here, Camp Bowie.

In 1980, Italian sculptor Giordano Grassi’s "American G.I." statue joined the Doughboy, remembering Tarrant County residents lost in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf War.

About Bud Kennedy

Bud Kennedy is a homegrown Fort Worth guy who started out covering high school football here when he was 16. He went away to the Fort Worth Press and newspapers in Austin and Dallas, then came home in 1981.

Since 1987, he's written more than 1,000 weekly dining columns and more than 3,000 news and politics columns. If you don't like what he says about politics, read him on barbecue.